


Fan Videos as Canon Commentary

by yourlibrarian



Series: Reading Fan Vids [17]
Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Commentary, F/M, Gen, M/M, Meta, Nonfiction, Reviews, vidding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:07:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23082199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourlibrarian/pseuds/yourlibrarian
Summary: Because I am in the midst of theMarch Meta Matters Challenge, I've been reviewing my Dreamwidth account since its early days.  I was surprised to realize that fan video recs made up a lot of my first two years of posts.  And as I read over them, I realized how important they were to my fannish experience at the time and what they revealed to me about canon.
Series: Reading Fan Vids [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/465793
Kudos: 3
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	1. I Don't Have a Lawn, but I Do Have Video Preferences

**Author's Note:**

> Will include content originally posted in 2004-2006.

I have a confession to make -- I don't watch fan videos as often as I used to. That surprises me because, while I have saved some fanfiction works to re-read, I rarely ever do. This is partly because there is always so much more to read but the same number of hours in a day I've ever had. Fan videos though? I rewatch those regularly. 

And while I haven't saved that many over the years compared to how many I've watched, the ones I have I continue to enjoy just as much, despite how many times I have seen them. Granted, the typical fan vid only consumes three minutes of time whereas the same is true of only the shortest fanfic. But the effect a video can have is profound in different ways.

Because I am in the midst of the [March Meta Matters Challenge](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/March_Meta_Matters_Challenge/profile), I've been reviewing my Dreamwidth account since its early days. I was surprised to realize that fan video recs made up a lot of my first two years of posts. (I was also surprised to discover how funny my travel disaster stories could be, but that's another topic.) I've recced vids already this year, but it is curious that I watch them less often now when, back at the time my early recs were done, it was a much more difficult process. There was no streaming, and being on dial-up meant taking as much as an hour to download a video while blocking the landline. So one might do all that only to discover that the video wasn't really one's cup of tea. Was the greater difficulty part of giving the vids more of a shot? Maybe. 

Yet vids also do so much more to impress these days. Even the most experienced vidders generally had to work with less than ideal footage, so that despite their best efforts the visuals weren't always that good. That original content for old fandoms often doesn't hold up well now either, even when it's in an HD format. Yet it's remarkable to think how stunning current vids are, visually, by comparison. They're suitable for widescreen viewing -- and many of us have wider screens than ever, too. It's not just the greater clarity and the amazing images, but the technical prowess that any vidder with some experience can now bring to bear on the story they want to tell. There's various reasons why it's now so much simpler to do constructed reality vids as well as manips, which expands the possibilities for storytelling or meta commentary enormously.

Since I haven't been deep into many fandoms over the years though, "clip exhaustion" accounts for a lot of the reason that I watch much less these days. This is particularly true when a fandom has been around for a while, and especially if the canon has been closed for several years or more. That's because the original source footage is finite. While I am always open to trying out a new vid for a long-finished canon if someone recommends one, it becomes a rare thing the longer time goes on. When I have seen the same footage used the same way several dozen times, I'm just not willing to watch one more. This is all the more true in fandoms where a major pairing tends to dominate all the fanworks, or in fandoms where the footage for the particular pairing or story type is already limited. (And given how short a lot of canons have become these days, vidders are more constrained than ever, since at one time even a single season show meant at least 22 hours of footage). 

But it's not the only reason. I'm not always a fan of new video styles. For safety reasons, vids with a lot of flashing content are not a good idea, and there's a point at which fast cuts just become difficult to follow and as dull as an endless static shot in an old-style vid. But it's the talking that gets me. Some vids are nonstop talking, laid over a relatively unimportant musical background. To me these are fan videos of an entirely different nature, what I might call "an emotional edit." In other words, they could be considered recruiter vids, but they're also often a form of canon edit to single out someone's storyline (often a ship one), laid over a little musical glue and generally highlighting emotional beats. Because they do usually have a narrative they're more meta than, say, a video highlighting action scenes or special effects. But I find them tiresome nonetheless. Especially once I've become quite familiar with the fandom, this has all the appeal of reading a whole page of selected quotes from the canon.

That said, it's understandable that what might once have been a con vid has to become even more accessible when its potential audience numbers not in the hundreds but the millions. Virtually anyone who has seen the canon even in passing would be able to make sense of these videos and understand their general direction and meaning. But it's for just that reason that it makes it feel particularly spoonfed to me and that I don't tend to get anything out of them, because they're rarely telling me something I don't already know.

I do think that occasional dialogue drop-ins are a different thing. If you've got a 3 minute vid with three or four spoken lines in it, those could actually provide a powerful punch depending on how the rest of the vid is structured. And I do get how obscure and complicated it can be to watch vids with no dialogue at all, and which don't even use the song lyrics as a direct guide but more as a thematic reference. The less familiar I am with the canon, the less likely I "get" anything that the vidder is going for in them. I'm pretty sure that there are lots of vids I've interpreted either lightly or not at all as the vidder intended, even when I _do_ know the canon well.

However, to me catching the clever allusions and connections made through a series of musical beats feels very rewarding. In a way, I suppose I can relate to some of the [ideas in this news article](https://www.deseret.com/entertainment/2020/3/5/21158444/star-wars-high-republic-harry-potter-target-disneyland-super-fans-nerd-culture-marvel-disney):

"But casual fans now embrace aspects of hardcore fandom. Someone who wears a “Harry Potter” shirt of the character Moaning Myrtle might just need a thin T-shirt for the gym, or they might have bought it while at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park. It doesn’t necessarily mean they know the name of the elf of Hepzibah Smith, who gave Tom Riddle the Hufflepuff Cup…But does that water down the fandom and dilute the special connections that some communities hold dear?

“It also may make it harder to find superfans like myself,” Hinck said.""

The music vid of old has a higher bar for viewing, and takes more work to make it successful in conveying a certain story. As it happens, I don't think this was ever intentional, but rather a restriction forced upon vidders who could not simply splice in pieces of dialogue throughout their work (especially when just getting the images to hit beats was hard enough). The music and lyrics _had_ to do the talking for them. But as a result, the viewer also had to be more invested and more knowledgeable, more willing to decode what they were being shown. (It was, perhaps, despite being visual, a particularly good fannish practice for people with literary criticism backgrounds as well as film majors!)

I find, though, that this form of video making makes the payoff higher -- the stories more emotional, or more funny, or more interesting. There's nothing wrong with other kinds of fan videos, and even the older style music vids aren't always srs bizness. But I often feel that I'm not the audience for the more commonly found vids now, and they're definitely not the sort of keepers I'd save and rewatch for years.


	2. Buffyverse Videos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My earliest vid watching was in the Buffyverse fandom. Here's a look at some of the commentary embedded in or inspired by fan videos.

Following my introduction in the last chapter, this chapter details examples of vids from the Buffyverse and how they informed my understanding of the canon. Although the first vids I ever saw were at a Star Trek convention (the only one I clearly remember was a Voyager one set to the Beach Boys' "Sloop John B"), my earliest vid watching was in the Buffyverse fandom. These vids fell into various different categories to me -- musings on canon, on characters, on ships, on episodes or arcs. They also sometimes either told a story or they used the stories in the Buffyverse to highlight a theme. And some of them simply went for visceral reactions -- humor or pathos or surprise.

Unfortunately many of these are no longer available online, or are perhaps not easily accessed. If anyone has any current links to offer, do let me know as I'd love to update them!

**Characters**

**[Nicole Anell’s video to “Walk the Walk.”](https://nicole-anell.livejournal.com/55942.html#cutid1)** Essentially Buffy is a bad-ass who does things her way. I rather enjoyed seeing “Action Buffy” through the seasons and the video had a nice celebratory feel to it without overlooking the price she has often had to pay. Interestingly, even though the main reason Buffy is a cultural icon is because she is an action hero, this is never something I related to very strongly. 

Which is not to say I didn't like that about her. But I found it interesting to consider that because the show is such a mix of humor, drama, plot arcs, and horror as well as action, it never needed to be the main way I connected with her. It was enough that her special abilities gave her different problems and also allowed her to be unaffected by some of the things ordinary women do have to contend with. One of the things this video made me wonder about is how I would see her if her physical abilities really were my main point of connection. In any case, the video brought out the Buffy love.

 **Luminosity’s video to “Sex on Wheels”** could be considered the above video’s AtS counterpart, featuring Action Angel. Again, punchy video covering all 5 AtS seasons. Sometimes you can just see the love a vidder has for a character. Angel is the coolest of dark avengers -- if I didn’t believe it before, I would after seeing this. And, of course, if you have Luminosity’s finesse with editing then your character ode is a little work of art.

Luminosity’s Darla video, **“Evil Angel”** is a wonderful look at Darla’s arc. Although the clip is not used, the video made me reflect that the first person we ever meet in the Buffyverse is Darla, and so much that comes afterwards starts with her. Although one could argue that it actually started with the Master, things never seem to be that personal between him and Buffy. And while Buffy never again meets up with Darla after Angel kills her, her influence over him and many of the other characters continues well into the end of the series.

As soon as I saw **“Family Portrait” by spyder616** , I immediately thought of an essay I’ve read about how the whole notion of the Fanged Four being a family came mostly from Drusilla. It also discussed how she and Angelus were very alike whereas Darla and Spike were, in some ways, the outsiders in the group. It was a wonderful discussion of the group’s dynamics and I think you could call this the video version.

 **Vrya’s “Bright Side of Life”** serves as a reminder that even in BtVS S6 there were more laughs than you might think. This was, I think, the first BtVS vid I ever saw. It gets a lot of its humor from the song really, but looking at “the bright side of death” was pretty apropos. I also really liked the idea behind vrya’s Spike video, **“Schism.”** It was the technical aspects to this video that made it stand out to me. I thought she had a great notion to highlight Spike’s S7 bender as a personality split that had been brewing for a while. Unfortunately I felt the song went on at least a minute too long. Had it been shorter this would have been a great psychological look at the character. As it was I felt it got somewhat repetitive, but it had some wonderful clip matches and cuts and is still worth checking out.

Of course, the first real change in "Spike's" personality came from his creation by Dru. **“Life Less Ordinary”** is a Spike/Dru video by jrmisstoughchick that sheds light on the first “half” of Spike’s eventful life. Although in canon we get to see relatively little of it, this video does a nice job of suggesting just what it meant for Dru to save William from mediocrity and lead him into an extraordinary world of adventure, romance, and drama. Or so unsouled Spike would certainly have seen it. I always dislike it when short shrift is given to this major segment of Spike’s life and certainly Spike had little desire to give it up. But at the end, it happens nonetheless. 

His story continues in **Pepperlandgirl’s “Probably Me.”** Although Buffy may have been the motivation, Spike’s next great role actually came as Dawn’s bodyguard. In fact, had Buffy not returned from the dead, his unlife might have taken a very different path. For how long would he have stayed her guardian? Would his devotion to her have grown over time or would he have become restless? It’s a moot point when his focus shifts to becoming Buffy’s confidante and right-hand vamp. Yet that too,is a surprisingly short-lived role. He comes full circle to return to Angel’s side, no longer motivated to stay because of Dru but because of what he now has in common with only one other person. Assuming both survive the alley, their moments with the Summers women were more a fulcrum to launch them both into a new journey than the end point of their long lives.

 **Psycho‘s Angel and Connor vid “Father and Son”** was, I thought, a heartbreaking look at Angel’s short-lived dreams of fatherhood. I know some people didn’t care for what the Connor arc meant for Angel’s characterization but I actually loved it. I really felt Angel showed a humanity and vulnerability in that period I never saw before or since. I always thought baby Connor could have stayed around longer. He didn’t need to be seen in each episode. Heck, AtS spent most of a season never even referring to Cordelia before or after her passing. A line about the baby each episode would have been nothing. And they could have made Connor’s kidnapping a season finale instead of a mid-season cliffhanger. It would have been a better storyline than the Cordelia arc.

 **Wolfling and Magpie’s Faith video, “Woman Like a Man”** made me think about some of the differences between Faith and Buffy. Whereas Buffy wanted to be “just a girl” for most of her 7-year arc, Faith seemed to be completely unconcerned with being ordinary. In fact, one might assume that Faith didn’t think being “just a girl” was a very appealing proposition, not just because she wasn’t interested in ordinary, but because she also didn’t think being a girl was a very advantageous thing in many respects. Certainly she had little desire to play the usual girly role when it came to men, nor did she want to be restricted from experiencing anything in life. But the song also seemed to point out how well Faith gelled with, not men, necessarily, but people who were also strong and sure of themselves.

I have to admit I wasn’t really all that taken with **Neoni‘s video “Dirty Little Secret”** in the way I am with some vids. But I thought the title of it was very interesting considering the clips that were used. It made me think that the dirty secret in question was Buffy’s own feelings that she often feared to express, to her friends, her family, even her lovers. I was particularly struck with this in the clip where she is speaking to Dawn after their mother’s death. Dawn really felt that Buffy didn’t care, and so often it seems those closest to her wondered what she really felt, or like Riley, also assumed the feelings weren't there.

Magpie & Wolfling’s **“Return to Oz”** was, to me, incredibly revealing about how very unexplored Giles has been. On the one hand, a key figure in many ways to Buffy and Willow’s development through either his influence or his absence, and yet so rarely seen as anything but a Watcher. And always, somehow, on the outside of things. In the beginning this seemed a natural side-effect of his age and position in relation to the budding Scooby group. Yet despite the increasing trials the whole group went through and Giles’ deeper involvement in Buffy’s life and her family, he remains a bit of a mystery.

I loved what Sheila did for Gunn in her vid **Jesus Walks**. The tone is perfect in setting up Gunn’s own spin on his life and events. Like Giles, I find it interesting that he is so separated out from the group in so much of this, much like I think he was on the series. Unlike the others, his own arc was largely untouched by Angel’s, and as the vid reveals his main connection was to Wes, however briefly. One of my favorite moments is in the rapid cuts to Buffy, Faith and Angel, making me think of how Gunn has his own form of heroism which is largely unsung in contrast to the heroes who get the titles.

**Canon and Ships**

**catatonic1242's video to "Bad Reputation"** is a Faith/Spike vid. I can understand why people want to see Spike and Faith together because each character is chock full of sex appeal. However if anything this video seems to demonstrate to me exactly why this pairing wouldn't really work. They're too much alike. I think the two might like each other, and would certainly be attracted. But I really can't see it as more than that. Spike doesn't have the patience to be reforming people, and it's exactly there where Angel and Faith connected. I also think Faith would see through Spike rather easily and wouldn't be that impressed. But it was a fun, upbeat, video to watch.

Catatonic 1242's video to **"Bed of Lies"** was melancholy and lovely. A video about the Buffy-Giles relationship, it was a pretty perfect match of song and subject. And speaking of ships which don't really work for me, this video is also a good example of why I don't see B/G. I really love the complex dynamics of their mentor/mentee relationship and the shifting balance of power within it. In some ways turning that into a romantic relationship seems beside the point. It's already a rich and layered story. 

**Laura Shapiro’s Xander video to “Some Fantastic”** looks at Xander’s ability to sabotage his relationships. Or, you might say, he just has rotten luck, but to me this video tells a different story of how Xander seems to constantly take a contrary stance in his relationships -- pushing for one when it isn’t wanted, and going along with one when he’s really not that interested, usually ending in misery for his partner. I really liked that brief clip in the beginning where she pairs Xander’s drinking with his father’s in a rather telling moment. 

Some vids that have a lot going for them but could also have used some more tinkering, such as **Rogue’s Bangel video to “Bittersweet Symphony.”** I will confess my prejudice up front and say that I don’t think this video would have worked at all for me had it been a different song, because that was the main reason I downloaded it. However, I have never been particularly into Bangel, if for no other reason than that I came into BtVS during S4 and didn’t actually see S1-S3 for another two years. So by that time I had a certain distance from the ship. It seemed tragic and sad (you’d really have to hate the ship not to be moved by “I Will Remember You”) but, frankly, past tense. And then came Spuffy and all those complexities and the future for Buffy/Angel seemed even more academic. 

But listening to and watching Rogue's video gave me some insight into how others likely saw this pairing. Bittersweet indeed. I don’t know what I might have thought of Buffy and Angel had I watched them from the start. The ending to S2 was shocking enough retrospectively. But this video, which I wish had a more coherent storyline, still got enough things right that I started to see how deeply this relationship must have burned into Buffy’s psyche. And knowing that, I also understand better why Buffy looked at Spike the way she did. Everything about Buffy and Angel’s relationship revolved around their roles. As Angel once said in “Some Assembly Required”

ANGEL: See? Whenever we fight you always bring up the vampire thing.  
BUFFY: Well, I didn't come here to fight.

And despite the grudging to encouraging approval the couple received from those around Buffy, fights always appeared, whether internal or external. In the end, they couldn’t change who they were. The ending to this video made me want to scream because it was just building up to something really heartbreaking and stopped. But it made me think, and that’s why I ended up reccing it. (For a really effective version of this same theme, I'd point to [Nicole Annell's video](https://nicole-anell.livejournal.com/77580.html)).

Luminosity’s **“Mr. Brightside”** presents Angel’s view on Spike and Buffy’s relationship. One of the things I liked about this video is that it does something most fanfic doesn’t, which is to put Angel in the middle of the S/B/A triangle. The fic I’ve seen tends to put either Buffy or Spike in this position. That may be because it’s generally written from one of their points of view rather than Angel’s, and it either positions Buffy as the mutual object of desire or has Spike being a bridge between the other two. Here however, it’s very easy to see Angel sympathetically -- as lonely and distant in a way that Spike can never be because he’s so intent on making his presence felt. In Angel’s world, he is forever being denied the things he wants, things he sees Spike as able to have with no effort. Yet the video shows that he is not without affection for both of the others. Spike’s not just a rival, he is himself something Angel wants that he can not have. I think my favorite moment from this video is seeing Angel giving Buffy the amulet, and then having the amulet bring forth Spike. I hadn’t thought before about how Angel’s last gift to Buffy served to bring Spike back to him.

SDWolfpup’s look at Willow in **“Red Oyster Cult”** reveals the shifting power balance in Buffy and Willow’s friendship. In a contrast to the previous look at Spike as the loyal lieutenant to the central heroes, Willow is shown as someone far less comfortable with her place in the scheme of things. While the power balance was definitely in Buffy’s favor at the beginning, Willow’s pursuit of power seems largely a personal issue, a desire to have an independent influence on events. She may want Buffy’s respect, but she has never wanted to be Buffy. Willow wants to set her own course and get recognition in her own way. She is an ally, not a sidekick. Although she expresses it less openly than Cordelia, Willow is probably the only other character who could truly be seen this way.

 **Cybermintz and Happyme’s Spuffy video to “The Spy Who Loved Me”** reveals a bit of the lie in Buffy’s statement that she doesn’t trust Spike. To some extent she did. Despite her bad previous experiences, Buffy did take the chance of becoming involved with Spike, and trusted him with her secrets, even while she wished someone else could fill these roles. And, of course, she had been trusting him to fight at her side for some time by then.

 **Des’ree’s dual-show restrospective vid to “Gotta Be”** is, I think, an example of character moments as a group. This was a particularly well picked song for that with its repeating refrain of personality traits and matched clips, and the interesting effect of creating an ensemble feel even though many of these characters didn’t interact with each other. What we see is a canvas of character behavior across seasons and shows, of people facing often key moments in their arcs, joined together in an emotional tapestry.

While Willow may have come into her own, Wes’ arc is almost the opposite. **Butterfly’s “Hallelujah”** looks at Wes’ relationship with Fred, Gunn and Angel in a rather interesting way. I think it does a wonderful job of revealing his essential isolation from the people he has been close to and worked with in the last year of his life. By this time, of course, Cordelia is already gone. And Lorne doesn’t appear either, which made me consider the fact that there was no real connection between him and Wes despite their frequent interaction. What the vid shows instead, most strongly I think with Wes and Fred, is how their journey has been less about the relationships as the respective arcs of the characters, and how their lives touched. Wes wanted a great deal from Fred but they were in some ways like ships that passed in the night. Wes’ relationship with Angel was complex, fragmented and fraught with betrayal. He was actually closest with Gunn and the bond overcame a great deal. Yet in the end Wes eventually become isolated even from himself.

 **Charmax’s “Oh My God”** is an Anya/Willow vid that uses their scenes of joint magic to posit a different relationship between them. Given that the show itself uses the magic metaphor for f/f it was a great choice and made me look at the possibilities of this ship in a way I hadn’t before. I think it’s a real case of opposites attract. Unlike, say, S/A, S/B or X/C we’ve never seen a case of Willow being attracted to someone she’s not on good terms with. Xander, Oz, and Tara were all Willow romances that had their basis in friendship and would have continued as such even after they ended. Xander, on the other hand, has consistently had relationships that were antagonistic or had a definite attract/repel quality to them. While Anya certainly might have been open to an attraction to Willow, it was Willow’s lack of interest that kept anything from happening. What if, as in the case of this vid, Willow had been strongly attracted to Anya instead?

 **Tell Me** by laurashapiro takes a rather different tack with Faith, exploring her through her relationship with Buffy. Which in a way made me realize how difficult it is to really look at Faith’s arc without Buffy. Of course Angel was important to her too, but the bond of Slayerhood is always with her, and the tension in relating to and measuring herself against Buffy continues. Perhaps if we’d ever gotten to see a Faith series she, like Angel, could truly stand on her own. I liked the music chosen here, beginning with their mystical connection, and the underlying tone of pain.

 **Killing in the Name of by flrenze** is a look at Faith and Wes through the man central to both, Angel. Amazingly cut and timed, a really fascinating look at the Slayer and her one time Watcher. It also made me think how interesting it would be if Faith had to become a Watcher of sorts to Connor in Angel’s absence and what she might bring from her time with Wes. **“Bitemarks and Bloodstains” by Adam** is a look at Angel and Darla, it’s a little too effect-heavy but it’s a good musical choice, taking us through their arc. Couldn’t help thinking at the end if Angel doesn’t still dream of Darla. Hard to imagine he can escape her completely, especially post-Connor.

**Storylines and Themes**

A lot of vids tell a type of story, but they seem to do it at different levels. Some have very loose storylines, others are pretty specifically plotted, and some literally tell a story. A more plotted storyline might be **Blondie’s Spangel vid to “Dangerous.”** In a sense most slash vids have to be somewhat storyline oriented because there’s frequently so little shared screen time between the characters. This video was made pre-AtS S5 so the amount of time Angel and Spike actually spent sharing the screen was relatively small. Nonetheless it’s interesting to watch interactions take place that, well, didn’t. 

Of course, one fairly standard way of telling a clear story is to do an episode-focused vid. A good example is **Pepperland Girl telling the story of Hellbound to “Ghostbusters”**. The “Ghostbusters” one amused me because it was such an appropriate song (and dang, I never noticed how much Amy Acker could look like Annie Potts!) Although there’s prioritization for matching the video clips to the music, the story was a generally linear retelling of the episode (albeit a more entertaining one maybe!) Even so it could also make some telling character statements, such as “Busting makes me feel good” when Spike gets his own back beating Pavayne down. Souled or not, Spike’s thrill for the violence is a major driving factor in why he’s following his new path.

A little different from storyline videos, I would say some videos tell a type of story matched to a theme. In a way it reminds me of conventions such as Human AU in fic, where you have the characters and their relationships transposed to a different setting. Given that all the clips come from the canonical text, they have to work with the show's stories, but the combination of outside text from the music serves to transpose it somewhat. 

For example, **Cybermintz and Happyme’s Spike vid to “La Donna e Mobile”** is about Spike’s less than successful relationships with women. I love the beginning where he rants his confusion and is then echoed by the eternal male point of view in the music. However I’d say to some degree the story isn’t just about Spike, but rather about the sentiments in the lyrics about the mismatches between women and men generally. I’d also have to say the ending made me wonder what sort of opera performer James Marsters would have made had he had the voice. Somehow it would seem to suit his sense of drama. Or maybe that’s just Spike.

I’d put **SDWolfpup’s “Plowed”** into this general category also as it focuses largely on the violence and disaster that makes up Spike’s life and his often unsuccessful attempts to draw connections or meaning out of a new life where his place and direction are unclear. As the song repeats it’s “a world of human wreckage” not really his own. **Trisha’s Wes/Angel video to “Loser”** reeks of loneliness, failure and world wearyiness. Even though this is AtS S2-S4 material, Wes never really made it past this stage. Yet I didn’t see it so much as a character study as a more general statement on how efforts to move past a point or fix a problem can backfire or result in still more trouble. Unlike Spike’s case in “Plowed”, a lot of Wes’ problems really are of his own making, and as such they are even harder to overcome. 

Pepperland Girl’s Spangel video to “Still the One” may be a lighter look at this ship but also seems to me to point out the enduring power of familiarity and shared experience over even dislike (all the more so in this case for two technically immortal people who could expect most others around them to drop away over time). **Trisha’s Spangel video to “Soulmates”** makes this same point by using a totally different mood of shared suffering and parallel journeys. On a grimmer note is **WendyLouWho and Brainhiccup's "Releasing the Demons,"** a look at regret, decisions that can't be taken back, and how it's nevertheless easy to repeat those same mistakes. 

Certainly sex and violence is about as visceral as it gets and while the vid makes quite the commentary on the Spuffy ship, Trisha’s video to **“Figured You Out”** is really a perfect match of subject and song. Hard, angry, and lusty she does a great job of showing this pair in their confrontational unions. I always wonder, too, how much of this violence and anger was a result of personal differences and how much was an integral part of their oppositional roles. Would some side of it ever have been like this between Buffy and Angel? It seems almost inevitable to me. 

By contrast, **J-Dos’s video to “Wild Boys”** takes an often lighthearted look at the wild side of the Buffyverse men, but the collection of clips still ends up revealing the hidden violence in all of them. Even Andrew, who makes a brief appearance in his Spike-copying Big Bad getup, is, like most of them, a killer of humans as well as demons. Someone who doesn’t appear in that collection is Connor, who is the focus of **Milly’s “Counting Bodies.”** This very stylistic depiction of Connor’s origins gives his arc of fear, confusion and violence the stamp of inevitability. Maybe because the video’s fairly grim it seemed to me to go on too long but it brings such style to the proceedings it really shouldn’t be missed.

Laura Shapiro’s **“Beatitudes”** is probably the direct opposite in tone with a lovely spiritual and compassionate look at sacrifice and grace in the many characters that went across the screen in BtVS. Yet it has the same appeal, bypassing story or even deep commentary to play on our recognition of frailties and humanity. Looking over her work here, it seems that synchronicity between musical moments and action probably has an even deeper relationship to a vid’s success than vids going for a different type of appeal. Perhaps this is because recognizing those moments allows for other personal connection as well. 

It may only be my reaction, but I would argue that **hazyshade‘s retrospective BtVS S1-3 video to “Changes”** also succeeds largely through its emotional appeal, in this case to our nostalgia. Even though I saw the first three seasons at the same time as the end of BtVS’s run, the musical tone and lyrics such as “And these children that you spit on, as they try to change their worlds” gave me a strong sense of what those seasons must have been like in their original airing. I saw the innocence, hope and grief at irreversible decisions the central characters experienced while they grew up, or took dramatic turns in their life journeys. **caltrask55’s video to “In My Life”** covers some of this same ground in a more sentimental fashion. It’s a lovely choice of music and clips but suffers from often low clip quality and the editing could have been a bit better. Nonetheless it’s hard not to be moved by the nods to characters now gone even while the core Scoobies remain. 

Luminosity’s Wes vid to **“Here”** works on a sense of foreboding and tragedy as we watch Wes take steps to save himself only to find himself face-to-face with the very truths he would have hidden from himself had he known. Although in her vid Luminosity draws parallels between Wes’s efforts to save Angel and Fred as a result of his love for them both, I feel that Wes is unconsciously trying to save himself. As he tells Illyria at the very end, he has nothing to live for once he’s failed at his self-appointed tasks. Angel has been the motivation for his professional existence and Fred for his personal one. With the mindwipe undone he knows how he has failed them both. 


	3. Going Past the Boundaries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While fanfiction goes far afield from canon itself, vids are more limited in what they can do. But that doesn't mean they don't also explore possibilities.

These days, creating a constructed reality vid is a direct parallel to the fanfic practice of AU writing. But even before this was particularly common, there were vids made that suggested the varied possible directions or placements of canon without actually using non-canon footage or manips.

Of course, canon itself may also do AUs. There's no sense in trying to make a linear episodic vid when the episode is Buffy's S4 “Restless.” So while **Nicole Anelle's White Rabbit** does some general lyric matching, overall it conveys more of the episode’s dreamlike style. There are some very nice moments in it, particularly in the “White Knight is talking backwards and the Red Queen’s off with her head” section where the lyrics provide some focus. Looking at this vid also reminds me of the richness of the BtVS/AtS text. So many alternative, auxiliary and canonical stories can be told with the material it provides.

**Blondie’s Spuffy video to “The Promise”** might be considered a “what if Season 7 and TgiQ had happened differently?” The wistful and melancholy tone is quite lovely, but the most telling phrase may be “if you dreamed of me like I dreamed of you.” In truth, of course, Spike and Buffy were on pretty different relationship pages. One can always wonder what might have happened had they had more time after Spike returned, if they could have somehow met in the middle with more time and patience. One other aspect it unintentionally reveals is the vast gap formed by their age difference. For Spike there is nothing but time, yet Buffy is barely into her 20s and is just beginning her journey in adulthood. 

**Every Day is Exactly the Same by ryan** is a bit of an AU, speculating what if Angel never returned from hell after Buffy killed him in Season 2 and everything since then has just been its own form of torture? It was an interesting idea and (come to think of it) explains a lot about Darla’s miraculous return, Connor’s even more miraculous birth, and Cordelia’s downright bizarre arc!

**Xandra‘s Dawn/Xander video to “You Get Me”** tells a humorous story of Dawn’s interest moving from Xander to Spike. But in some ways it also shows us what potential their relationship might have, had her interest in Xander been more than a passing crush. Certainly Dawn/Xander shippers would have plenty to point to here in showing their longtime connection and potential for more.

Of course, most non-canon ship vids are “what if”’s. **Katheryn’s Spander vid to “I Need You”** is no exception. It takes many of their interactions (as well as some that never happened) and makes one wonder, “what if that conversation had gone differently?” or “what if they hadn’t been interrupted” or “what if they had interpreted that another way?” The music’s rather too sentimental for my taste, as I normally wouldn’t find it representative of either character, but in some ways it’s necessary to soften the harder edges of their relationship into something positing friendship and bonding rather than antagonism.

Of course the ultimate “what if” videos are the ones that create new opening credits for continuations of BtVS, AtS or possible spinoffs. These would include **Luminosity’s “No Limits”** video for AtS S6, **Dana’s BtVS credits** for a season 8, Marauder’s credits for an **Illyria spin-off** , etc.

However while all of the above use canon clips to suggest a canon deviation or extension, there was one vid which did something completely different. Most vids use the song lyrics to shape the canon story they’re telling, but the only one I recall which used canon clips to tell a different story was **Sisabet’s “Country Cavalcade Bug”**. This trio of country song clips put together 3 mini vids where the canon clips were used to tell the lyrical story, making it an AU vid of sorts. This worked better for the first song (about an abusive husband) than the last (using Xander and Anya's story for Little Pink Houses) but it made me think about what makes AUs work in general.

I've written elsewhere about how we can [categorize stories](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6765271) under the broad umbrella of AUs. In fact, AO3 currently offers 15 options in tags. While most of these are setting specific, they also include broader categories such as Canon Divergence, Modern or Historical Setting, and various character-level changes such as No Powers or Fantasy. In my post I had laid out four types, which covered a variety of changes -- alternate life (AL), alternate setting (AS), alternate timeline (AT), and alternate characterization (AC).

It is not too difficult for vids to play with alternate timelines, or even alternate lives. For example, the Buffyverse has several canon AUs including the Wishverse and the Birthdayverse, the preseries Normal Again verse, as well as implied but unseen Dawn verse where S1-S3 are slightly altered. I have seen vids that have attempted to do more with these timelines, such as suggesting events in the Dawn verse by utilizing clips of Michelle Trachtenberg from earlier projects. However things like alternate characterization can be hard to do visually, and alternate settings require a good bit of outside canon sources, some of which are only possible if the actors actually performed roles in the needed settings.

The biggest difference though usually has to do with length of the vid. For example, many vids already edit down musical choices to either create a shorter timeline or to omit parts of the song that don't work as well for the vid. Vids that stretch past 5 minutes are rare, although the Buffyverse can boast one of them, Luminosity's [Scooby Road](https://www.lumsvids.com/vid/c001-scooby-road/). While as a concept vid it was a great view and quite an achievement, it was not used to create an alternate storyline or even one following canon in a linear fashion the way that, say, the amazingly edited [BtVS Abridged by Rowena](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81vIVSUdOuM) was. Instead what it proved was that any piece of music could be utilized to tell a story with existing canon material (BtVs fortunately providing seven seasons' worth of content) and that a vidder could also create musical motifs to represent particular characters or actions, much like a composer does when scoring an episode or film. In short, it showed off the fan vid as an art form.

In 2020, fanworks are increasingly regarded as an art genre and certainly part of what is bringing them this status is the way that they can comment on the original works of art in a way that previously only written (and generally professional) criticism would do. In fact, fanworks, because they do not need to create all the infrastructure and world building that canon does, can go straight into the emotional center of characters or ships or storylines. Certainly many fans find that the way fanworks reveal these truths or extend the possibilities of canon, makes them either a good counterpart to it, or even a richer story than the one they were originally offered.


End file.
